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Strategic bombing during World War II in Europe began on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) began bombing Polish cities and the civilian population in an aerial bombardment campaign. [33] As the war continued to expand, bombing by both the Axis and the Allies increased significantly.
In terms of scale, the strategic bombing conducted in World War II was unlike any before. The bombing campaigns then conducted over Europe and Asia could involve aircraft dropping thousands of tons of conventional bombs or, as happened twice in Japan in 1945, devastating much of a city all at once with an atomic bomb.
In the early days of World War II, bombers were expected to strike by daylight and deliver accurately in order to avoid civilian casualties.Cloud cover and industrial haze frequently obscured targets so bomb release was made by dead reckoning from the last navigational "fix"—the bombers dropping their loads according to the ETA for the target.
The bombing of Dresden was a joint British and American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, during World War II. In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 772 heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons ...
A German World War II incendiary bomb remnant. Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to damage a target, generally an urban area, through the use of fire, caused by incendiary devices, rather than from the blast effect of large bombs. In popular usage, any act in which an incendiary device is used to initiate a fire is often described as ...
The bombing of Tokyo (東京空襲, Tōkyō kūshū) was a series of air raids on Japan launched by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific Theatre of World War II in 1944–1945, prior to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A bombardier or bomb aimer is the crew member of a bomber aircraft responsible for the targeting of aerial bombs. "Bomb aimer" was the preferred term in the military forces of the Commonwealth , while "bombardier" (from the French word for "bomb thrower" and similar in meaning to " grenadier ") was the equivalent position in the United States ...
A bombardment group or bomb group was a unit of organizational command and control group of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) during World War II. A bombardment group was normally commanded by a colonel. The table of allowances (TOA) for personnel, aircraft and equipment grew steadily over the course of the war doubling from 35 aircraft ...